IN OUR OPINION

Editorial: Burdening us all

Published: Saturday, December 14, 2013 at 6:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, December 13, 2013 at 1:31 p.m.

Not only is Florida denying health care to at least 800,000 uninsured residents, the state will be sending $5 billion from the pockets of its taxpayers to subsidize coverage elsewhere.

The figure comes from an analysis released last week by the Commonwealth Fund. Among the 20 states choosing not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, Texas is the only state that will lose more in federal funds than Florida by 2022, the study found.

Blame goes to Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford and other Republicans in Tallahassee opposed not only to expanding Medicaid, but any compromise that uses federal funding to cover the uninsured — not the least of which are more than 80,000 such residents here in Marion County.

They've only ensured the state will pay the taxes that fund coverage in other states, but not get the benefits from it.

Weatherford wrote a recent column for the Florida Times-Union explaining his position. He claimed that Medicaid “does little to help the poor,” which is easy to say for someone who already benefits from state-funded insurance.

He expressed concerns that the federal government would fail to fulfill its promise to pay for 100 percent of the program for the first three years and 90 percent after that. “We didn't fall for the promise that, 'If you like your Medicaid funding, you can keep your Medicaid funding,' ” he wrote.

It's a clever line but misses the point. If the federal government went back on its promise, Florida could simply opt out of the expansion. It really is that simple; a broken agreement means it is broken for both parties.

The speaker further claims that the expansion would eat up funding for other programs, failing to recognize the savings that the state would see such as reducing the need to pay for safety-net programs for the uninsured.

Munroe Regional Medical Center and Ocala Health Systems provide tens of millions of dollars a year in uncompensated care. They'll lose federal funding for unreimbursed care under the Affordable Care Act, but not benefit from a Medicaid expansion that would help keep uninsured people from using the emergency room for primary care.

The health care industry as a whole will lose substantially from the Legislature's failure to act. Expanding Medicaid would create 71,300 jobs in the industry in Florida and $8.9 billion in economic activity here by 2016, according to a study released earlier this year by two consumer groups.

Moreover, business groups, health care industry groups and the public themselves see the economic and humanitarian value in the Medicaid expansion in a state that has the second-highest number of uninsured residents in the nation.

Weatherford and others opposed to expanding Medicaid should at least reconsider a compromise that would use $51 billion in federal funds to purchase private insurance for low-income residents. Arkansas received federal approval for a similar plan.

Otherwise, Florida lawmakers will not only be costing uninsured residents, they're costing all residents.

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